I See Your Empire Down
by Glowing Fish
Summary: As The Last Great Time War ends in fire, the TARDIS and the newly regenerated Doctor are thrown into a most unlikely place, but it may be the only place where he can find consolation.
1. Chapter 1

The Doctor pushed the button on The Moment, and the world bent and crackled and twisted around him, and he could see himself in the crowd at Dealy Plaza, still wearing that ridiculous Edwardian suit, and he was floating somewhere hundreds of feet in the air, seeing the whole thing take place, frame by frame, back and forth, and wanting to scream down at his face in the crowd, but none of this had happened yet, or was he remembering or imagining or?

He steadied himself, on his feet. He remembered, he had walked here out of the TARDIS, out of all the places in the galaxy that it could throw him after the blinding flash that had wiped out Gallifrey and the Dalek fleet in an instance, it was back to earth, back to a fixed point in time that was so terrible, and yet, so necessary, because the tragedy of Kennedy's death would lead to his desire for a lunar landing to be a national goal, and that was the way he would defeat...

Defeat who? He asked himself. His head was still swimming. He had entered a fixed point in time that he could never visit before, all due to the backlash of energies of his own planet's destruction. But he had to do something...but if he was here now, he realized, then he also had time to get to London, to Totter's Lane, and tell himself about the Daleks, and the whole thing could be interrupted, but...

Shots rang out.

It was happening again.

He also had time to get to London, to Totter's Lane, and tell himself...

Shots rang out.

And he realized he might be in the wrong place, and the wrong time. A man with crazy eyes in an Edwardian suit at a scene of national tragedy, and he had to move, but he couldn't through a head that didn't know where it was in time or space.

He blinked and saw a woman staring at him, with very bright eyes. She grabbed his hand and said: "RUN"

They ran and ran, through the confused crowds, her pulling him along. Is this how it had felt to Rose, that first time? Who was Rose?

The woman found his TARDIS, and pushed the door open.

"Who are you?" he asked her. Usually the question that people asked him. As the doors closed, and the TARDIS begin to shake, she replied:

"I am Eris"

And when he woke up, the TARDIS having been thrown somewhere else entirely by the flow of time, he wondered what that meant. He knew Earth history and mythology. The Greek goddess of chaos? Was that a goddess or an alien? Why had she saved him? How had she recognized him?

And, more importantly, why was he wearing this ridiculous outfit still? He didn't know who he was yet, but he knew he wasn't the type of person who wore ornate clothing like this. Out of all his confusion and fear and nausea and the fact that he didn't know what time he was in, he knew that he wanted to put on a different outfit.


	2. Chapter 2

The Doctor stepped outside of the doors of the TARDIS, something he had done so many times before, and although he had done it in fire situations before, this was the first time he would step out of those doors, back into the universe, being the last of his kind. Normally, he would wonder what he looked like, but he didn't have time to check his appearance, his usual vanity and the thought that no matter what happened, he would pull through was gone.

He was in a dark cave. There was mist blowing everywhere. He couldn't see a thing.

None of this was odd. What was odd was that he couldn't feel the flowing of time. He couldn't feel the motion of the earth underneath him. If he hadn't just seen his entire world destroyed, it would be an incredible shock. As it was, it was just another unpleasant surprise. He wondered if this is how humans felt, to be unable to feel anything around them. He felt unsteady on his feet, and he gently fell to his knees, seeing nothing but darkness and feeling nothing but the cold mist closing in on him. He wondered if the destruction of Gallifrey had taken away his status as a Time Lord. He wondered, briefly, if the Higher Authority that he never resorted to appealing to had punished him for what he had done by throwing him into what seemed to be Hell.

He laughed to himself, the sound in his skull unfamiliar.

"Well, if this is Hell, it doesn't feel too bad." his voice sounded unfamiliar, and that too seemed almost comical to him. "I wonder how long I could just lie here and sleep..." he closed his eyes for a moment. He didn't know how long he laid like that. Which in itself was a new thing, since he usually always knew the passage of time down to the millisecond, and the microsecond if he tried.

On the edge of his vision, he noticed a light in the darkness. It grew, growing brighter, while still keeping a faded quality. He decided to open his eyes. His curiosity was still in effect, even if his instinct for self-preservation was not. He was looking up into the face of a woman in a white dress, her body seeming to give off a diffuse light. Odd, he thought, but then it had been an odd day.

"Hello, I am the..." he stopped himself from finishing his sentence. Was he still The Doctor? Did Doctors do the things that he had done.

"My name is Lucrecia. Lucrecia Crescent. Doctor Lucrecia Crescent."

He laughed mirthlessly.

"Well, that is a sign. I am a doctor too. In fact, The Doctor. I don't know if I like that name, now. I've done things I shouldn't have." but having another person to speak to had given him some energy, and he picked himself off the ground, and dusted himself off.

The two figures looked at each other. Lucrecia was a young woman, maybe thirty or so, but despite the smoothness of her face and the unblemished character of her white dress, she didn't seem to be a state of happiness or innocence. Behind her face, there seemed to great age and sorrow.

And Lucrecia, looking at this young man dressed all in black, with his manically grinning face, who had arrived unexpectedly in a place that so few could reach, seemed to also be very old, and to have seen something equally terrible.


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor looked at Lucrecia. Lucrecia looked at The Doctor.

"I wonder who that woman was, if she was the one who sent me here?"

"What woman? I don't know any women who would know I was here. I have been forgotten by the world. I hope."

"Her name was...Eris. She was in Dealy Plaza. Right before the President was shot."

A puzzled look crossed Lucrecia's face. "The President was President Shinra, last time I checked, and he was still alive. But as for Aeris, I've seen that name written down in the notes of Professor Gast. Quite a bit, actually, scattered around."

"Greek goddess of chaos..."

"He would say, sometimes, that the entire world was connected and held together by a form of pure being that we couldn't see, because we were intent on taking it apart, that we wanted to find out what it was, but that the more we tried to find out, the more we forgot. He said that was the sin of scientists."

"I can think of worse sins than trying to find things out." He walked around Lucrecia, thinking of where the light permeating her came from. "This isn't Earth, is it? Not mine, at least. You use names and words I am familiar with...but in an odd way. "

"This is The Planet." Lucrecia said, simply.

"But Doctor Gast...I should have listened to him. Science and war are similar, he said, and only later did I realize how true that is. People start out at war, remembering what peace is like, and wanting to go back to that. Science is the same way, you start with the real world, and you want to understand it better. But in both cases, at some point you are so taken with your tools and your ambitions that you forgot what you were looking at in the first place."

And The Doctor thought of that, thought of the young man he had been-but looking so much older- when he had set out on a lark to see all of time and space, and then thought of how the spirit of adventure had turned into the spirit of war, and how the more he had tried to leave that war, the more he had painted himself into a corner, until he was left with nothing but The Moment, looking at Gallifrey and the Dalek Fleet and all the other combatants...The Skaro Degradations, the Nightmare Child, the Horde of Travesties. How he longed to go back and forget what he had built for himself.

"And that is what I did, with science, with wanting to know more and more, to be able to manipulate more and more. And then I became the subject of the manipulations...me and my child. And now they took my child, and turned him into a weapon...and I saw that there was nothing I could do. That is why I am here."

The Doctor straightened his jacket. He still didn't know what this had to do with Eris in Dealy Plaza, and why he had reached here, but he realized that he hadn't come here accidentally. The young rough looking man, dressed in black leather, looked at the beautiful, ethereal woman dressed all in white, and knew that he had seen someone who had traveled down the same road as him, but that had gone one step further. And he had destroyed his entire world, killed his family, and wiped out the universe's oldest culture. But there was something about this woman, alone in the darkness, who seemed beyond despair.

"I am sorry. I am The Doctor. I can usually solve any problem. But here...I don't know what I can do. All I can say is...Thank You." The woman's glow slowly faded, and the Doctor walked back to the TARDIS, heading back into a universe that he now had the smallest hope that he could help instead of hurt.


End file.
